Feature: West Coast Stance

I first met James Mackie about six months ago when he pulled up to a friend’s in his red 2004 Audi TT coupe. I’ve always been a fan of the TT. James is normally a local to me, Kitchener Ontario, but at the moment is living in North British Columbia (Canadian West coast) working for 3ride.com, an online BMX shop. James does most of the work on his car himself - aside from paint and bodywork, and started into the Volkswagen/Audi scene with a Corrado. A great majority of the fitment scene in my neck of the woods comes from the VW guys, so I support them and their creativity as much as possible!

I’ll start with the suspension and the hidden beauty you don’t see right away, since that’s where I start when modifying cars. James’ car is dropped on Koni coils maxed out in height and dampening. For more adjustability, adjustable forged control arms were installed. james also added a set of Poly dogbone as well as control arm mounts to smooth it all out and stiffen it up. Stopping power was upgraded with eurospec slotted/cross-drilled rotors and Hawk ceramic pads, which give a nice bite as well as being street friendly.

The wheels are what make this car look perfect to me. I saw these wheels far before I met James and thought they were badass, not only because they are BBS LMs, one of my favorite wheels, but also the fact I had never seen lips painted the way these were.
The beauty is in the attention to detail, and some how James knows the amount of checkers on his wheels (1,742). The faces were painted “black magic pearl” and finished with fully polished BBS hardware. These beauties are BBS LM, sized in a stunning 19x8.5 fashion, with reverse mounted faces and a 10mm spacer in the rear, bringing the effective offsets +5 up front and -5 in the rear. Tires are 215/35/19 Falken Fk452. Perfect amount of poke and stretch for the TT body style in my opinion.

James would like to thank Kevin Duggan at ChopShop in Milton Ontario for the rarely seen; properly pulled fenders and great bodywork. Clean fenders are something that has become scarce in the last couple months with the growth of stanced cars. The TT is fitted with a subtle, yet aggressive, Votex kit and includes accents like the badges, gas cap, and center of the wing color matched in the epic “black magic pearl” to go with the wheels.

Last but certainly not least, the performance mods. I personally know this car sounds great and that’s thanks to a Euro Sport short ram intake, with AEM dry filter, APR exhaust, APR diverter valve and APR turbo inlet. Topped off with an APR 93 octane tune. Lastly is a N2MB WOT throttle box, which I havent heard of until now, allows no-lift shifts, and launch control. Sadly, now that I have, I want one myself!